Who is the Doctor?
by TheSonOfTime
Summary: For now this is just the Doctor and River having a nice fun time, but coming relatively soon maybe if I want to: "The Doctor has to face a crucial Question. Is he still the Doctor, and will he stay the Doctor?" This may also just turn out to be a collection of random adventures, but I promise I'll get to the point sooner or later.
1. Chapter 1 - Happy times

**Who is the Doctor?**

"You are the worst!" River said, looking out of the Doctors time machine, that was gently floating above the deep orange skies of Gallifrey.

"I know." He answered, standing next to her, covering his mouth and glancing down at the planet. "I just thought you'd like to see it some time. And why wait for some time." He turned to her, smiling that ancient smile she had grown so fond of.

"Sure, but... This?" She asked, still looking a little worried. "Is this allowed?"

"Allowed?" The Doctor frowned at her, as if he'd never heard such a word before. "Since when do you care about that?"

"Besides..." He added, while programming the landing into the TARDIS' console "I'm the president of the place. What I say goes.".

He jumped back towards the door, and closed it, before walking to the center of the room next to River.

"Alright, I suppose we might as well." River admitted, before looking back at the console with worry. "You did callibrate the rotation-limiter, did you?"

The Doctor turned to face her, and smiled as calm as possible. "Happy Birthday!"

With that the TARDIS began its journey down towards the surface of Gallifrey, spinning and hurdling wildly until it caught itself about five metres above the surface, and slowly floated towards the ground.

"You are so..." River said, as she got back onto her feet inside the console room.

"So what?" The Doctor asked. "Wild? Adventurous? Reckless?"

"unreliable." She finished her statement. "I can't take one flight in this thing with you, without falling over."

"Come on... We've had worse. Remember when the TARDIS exploded?" He tried to defend himself.

"That technically never happened." River replied, stepping through the door, out onto the streets of Gallifrey. People were walking around, getting food, or chatting, like on any other planet. If it hadn't been for the people wearing the traditional Gallifreyan clothes, and the giant golden towers of the high council in the distance, you wouldn't have been able to tell it apart from any other planet.

"Welcome to my planet." The Doctor said, closing the door behind them. "Don't forget to stop by the gift shop."


	2. Chapter 2 - Calm Love

The air was pleasantly warm, and softly caressed Rivers skin, as she sat on a hill, outside of the giant shimmering glas sphere, that was the capital. The orange sky was coloured red by the setting second sun, that got smaller and smaller behind the horizon.

She sat on a blanket, next to the Doctor and watched the marvelous double-sunset.

"How old are you now anyway?" The Doctor asked, folding his coat and putting it to the side.

"If you must know, although you normally don't ask that... I'm 40 now..." She sighed, looking over the dusty, yet glittering hills in the distance.

"What?" The Doctor asked puzzled. "But at that age you'd just been in prison for the first time."

River picked her fork up, and ate the last bite of her piece of birthday cake. "I like to seperate my age between incarnations." She explained.

"You should know that's cheating." The Doctor said. "Then I'd only be five billion years old."

River pretended to look shocked. Of course she knew that he was too old to count, and that he liked to joke about his age.

"So how old are you actually?" She wanted to know.

"Five billion and fifteenhundred years old. Give or take a few aeons." He answered, before eating another bite of cake.

River chuckled, and sat back onto the blanket, looking up at the deep red sky.

"Do you remember when we first met?" River asked, smiling into the distance.

"No." The Doctor said. "We never did meet for a first time, did we?"

"Not really." River admitted. "It's weird isn't it? You'd think I'd get used to that."

"I never get used to it." The Doctor said, putting one arm around Rivers shoulder. "But that's what makes it so interesting."

River inched a little bit closer to him. The Doctor stood up, and brushed the dust of his trousers.

"I think it's time." He said, while putting on his coat. "Had a nice time, eh?"

"Sure. Like always. Wonders of the universe, beyond conception." River said, holding her hand up to the sky, as if to gently stroke it.

"I promise, next time we'll find something more exciting." The Doctor offered, as they made their way back to the TARDIS. "Running around, shooting stuff, all those fun things. All right?"

"Thanks." River said, as she closed the door behind them. "I hope you're better at keeping promises than you are at piloting."

"Oh you know me River." The Doctor said, before pulling a lever, thereby sending the ship to Rivers archeology lab.

"Yes I do." She replied, as she exited the blue box, and waved the Doctor goodbye.

"And that's the problem." She sighed, before slowly wandering of to bed.


	3. Chapter 3 - Squishy Surprise

The TARDIS twirled through a cloud of stardust, pulling a trail of glittering particles after itself, as it popped out of the nebulous formation. The Doctor inside the ship was in a happy carefree mood, with an open mind on the search for new possibilities. Maybe a new adventure, a new world, or even a new companion awaited him.

With these thoughts he hurdled through space, realising too late, that he was on collision course with a giant seemingly alive formation of blueish greyish color. He tried at the last moment to make a hard turn, but it was already too late, and the TARDIS crashed into the huge body, with what would have been a splashing sound, hadn't it happened in airless space.

As the Doctor now tried to change the course of the blue box, to escape this predicament he found that the control systems were offline, and the TARDIS was pushing through the viscous envoirment towards an area that was filled with what seemed close enough to air. When the TARDIS entered the bubble of gas, it fell down to the other side, where it landed in the the squishy ground.

When the TARDIS had seemingly landed, the Doctor got up, brushing of his clothes, and looked on a screen that was showing the outside. He wasn't sure wether he would be able to breathe in here, or if he could even walk on the ground that didn't seem very solid, so he quickly vanished into one of the TARDIS' corridors, only to exit the ship moments later in an orange space suit with a yellow helmet. He had also attached some wide plastic boards to the boots, similar to snowshoes, to ensure he wouldn't sink into the soft, greenish ground. He looked around the room with slightly translucent blue walls, with grey bubbles swimming on the outside. He estimated the room he was in to be round, with a diametre of about 30 metres. He also spotted five hallways going of into various directions.

He was about to make his way back to the TARDIS, not before taking a sample of liquid from one of the walls, when he heard another noise aside from the constant blubbering of the walls and ground. He heard what sounded like squishy footsteps coming towards him from one of the hallways.


	4. Chapter 4 - A guest

The noise drew nearer, and nearer, as the Doctor slowly turned around. The steps on the soft gooey ground got faster as they came closer, and the Doctor got a little nervous. By now he had at least gotten hold of the sonic screwdriver in his pocket, and was about to point it at the source of the unsetteling sounds.

"I am the Doctor." He said, calm and collected, while pulling it out of his coat. "And I come in peace!" He shouted pointing the blue glowing stick at the now startled old man, who had apparently been excited for a new face down in this cave of slimey membranes. The uselessness of the word 'peace', while pointing a glowing stick at a stranger only occurred to him, as the old man whimpered: "Please don't shoot me. I've been trapped here longer than I can count.".

The Doctor carefully eyed the stranger, who was just a bit taller than he was. He was a humanoid wearing a brown leather jacket, and black trousers. His beard was grey, and the only hair that remained on his head. He had a pair of glasses sitting atop his small nose.

The Doctor pulled his screwdriver back, and straightened his stance, before holding out a hand to greet the man with his friendliest smile. "Hello. I'm the Doctor." He said, before adding "I come in peace.".

The man was seemingly relieved. Not being shot was a delightful experience, especially after just being threatened with what he thought to be a gun. "Th- Thank you." He answered, shaking the Doctors hand. "My name is Archian."

"Pleased to meet you." The Doctor replied, before turning back around. "Now that we've clarified that you're not a creature trying to eat me, I have to go analyse something." He held up a small testube with some blue goo inside, and turned around, stomping back towards his ship.

The old man simply stood there dumbstruck upon the sudden desinterest of his conversational partner. "Wait!" He called after the Doctor, before following him as quickly as it was possible for him on the squishy and woobly surface. "Hold on. How would you analyse anything in a small box like th-" He was cut of by his own tongue as he opened the door and gazed upon the wonders of "bigger on the inside"-technology.

"Pretty impressive, eh?" The Doctor said, as if he'd been waiting for Archian to follow him. He clealry hadn't been, he thought, without wasting a second of thought about his previous companions. Why would he deliberately wait for anyone to come barging into his ship to disturb his important work? He started spinning a centrifuge with an amount of the blue goop from the testube inside.

"This place is amazing." The old man muttered, stroking the reilling of the staircase. "How does it work?" He asked the Doctor.

"It's bigger on the inside." He replied, while joyfully plugging a scanner to what seemed to be some sort of console.

"Yes I can see that." Archian rolled his eyes, before further inquiring: "But how does it work?"

The Doctor looked at him, frowning slightly. "Nothing you'd be able to comprehend I think." he huffed.

The old man was seemingly appalled at this remark, and hurriedly stepped up the the console. "Excuse me, but I don't think you know who you're talking to." He puffed at the Doctor. "Enlighten me." The Doctor demanded. "With pleasure." Archian answered, pulling a notebook out of his jacket. "I am Archian Gerring, professor of advanced dimensional theory at Lunar university." He explained, showing the Doctor a moon-shaped emblem on the book.

"Are you now?" The Doctor was sceptical. Not so much of the origin of the Gentleman standing before him, but rather of the way this meeting turned out. He was smarter than this man, that much he knew, but he was still annoying him.

"Are you going to explain it now?" Archian asked, and the Doctor, having run out of excuses started explaining.


End file.
